The U.S. and China Need to Work Together for Peace on the Korean Peninsula

[정일영]

[The Korean Odyssey]

*We need to come up with a new type of multilateral cooperation in which the U.S. and China can cooperate to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue together. ⓒiStock

Il Young Jeong

Research Professor_Institute of Social Sciences_Sogang University

Recently, the atmosphere surrounding Korea and its neighbors has been quite unusual. Rather than an overarching trend influencing events in the regions, an array of different sources and trends are coming together to effect change in the region. In this article, I will analyze the situation in Northeast Asia from the perspective of the Korean Peninsula and discuss how best to respond.

The quiet resurrection of the Northern Triangle(North Korea-China-Russia) and the Southern Triangle(South Korea-U.S.-Japan)

In the early 1990s, with the wind-down of the Cold War, the Roh Tae-woo administration in South Korea effectively broke down the confrontational structure on the peninsula(the so-called Northern Triangle vs. Southern triangle) through Roh’s Nordpolitik policies. By establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union(1990) and China(1992), the South Korean government knocked down a pillar of the Cold War establishment on the peninsula.

Of course, China and post-USSR Russia did not scrap their alliances with North Korea, but they have come to play mediating or balancing roles when conflict on the Korean Peninsula escalates. In particular, China led the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue and has tried to resolve security concerns in Northeast Asia.

In the end, the North Korean nuclear negotiations conducted by the US, China, and the multilateral system in Northeast Asia ended in failure. In September of 2017, North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test and effectively declared that the country now possessed nuclear weapons. On the Korean Peninsula, North Korea's nuclear armament resulted in a strict sanction regime against the North, which in turn set the standard for the international community’s response. With Russia and China also participating in the sanctions regime, North Korea ended up thoroughly isolated from the international community.

However, as the strategic competition and the trade war between the US and China continues, as well as overlapping Western sanctions against Russia, the sanctions regime on North Korea is showing cracks and becoming harder to sustain. At the same time, North Korea is strongly supporting China and Russia and intensifying its criticism of the United States. In other words, North Korea is trying to rebuild the previous trilateral alliance between North Korea, China, and Russia.

Preventing tacit permission for North Korea's nuclear weapons

What is more worrisome about the recent change is that after the failure of the 2019 US-DPRK summit in Hanoi, North Korea has changed security strategies. During Hanoi, the DPRK had aimed to elicit an American security guarantee. After the failure in Hanoi, it has foregone that strategy in favor of guaranteeing its own safety through nuclear weapons. Now, North Korea is trying to attract China and Russia, which are already in conflict with the U.S.

The UN Security Council’s process in responding to North Korea’s ICBM launch in May 2022 has great implications for the future of the sanctions regime. However, the US-led proposal for additional sanctions against North Korea was rejected by China and Russia and the resolution went nowhere. Now, it is unlikely that strong sanctions against North Korea based on UN Security Council resolutions are unlikely to work as they once did. Even if North Korea conducts a seventh nuclear test, it is possible a UNSC resolution proposing further sanctions could be rejected again.

It appears that the ongoing conflicts between the US and China and between the US and Russia will be difficult to resolve in any short period of time. If North Korea rebuilds the trilateral alliance between North Korea, China, and Russia during this time, it is also possible that these states will implicitly tolerate North Korea's nuclear possession.

Recently, the South Korean government and the media have made several comments on the possibility of a seventh North Korean nuclear test or an ICBM launch. However, what we should be concerned about now is not only North Korea's provocations themselves, but also the fact that a system is being set up on the Korean Peninsula where these provocations will be tolerated.

Create space and ‘pass’ the issue to China

The situation in Northeast Asia seems to have come to a standstill. However, as I explained earlier, the situation is deteriorating into a truly troubling state of affairs. So, how should we respond?

First, we must prevent the situation on the Korean Peninsula from getting worse. Above all, we need to strengthen Korea’s neighbors’ support for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. Support from the US and Japan is obviously important, but we also must promote peace diplomacy towards China and Russia to secure and confirm‎ their support for denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. In this process, Korea will need to avail itself of various actors and institutions, such as the United Nations, the International Peace Organizations, and the European Union.

Second, we need to create a space for Korean denuclearization negotiations and strengthen China's role in these negotiations. At least on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. and China need to share and divide labor so that they can work together to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. US-DPRK and North-South talks have long since come to a standstill, and we need to restart multilateral negotiations. Through Chinese-led multilateral negotiations, China could be separated from North Korea and maintain the momentum needed to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. Think of the nuclear issue as a game of football: we must make space for multilateral negotiations and then pass the North Korean nuclear ‘ball’ over to China.

Finally, we must seek out opportunities for prospective exchanges and cooperation between the two Koreas. Normalizing inter-Korean relations will be essential to ensuring peace on the Korean Peninsula. However, we will need to create a more forward-looking plan than we have in the past. South Korea's Ministry of Unification claimed in its 2023 plan that its new ‘bold plan’ will lead the way to the practical denuclearization of North Korea. Above all, what we need is a ‘bold plan’ for social and cultural exchange through opening avenues for inter-Korean contact and restoring mutual trust between the two Koreas. In addition, we must create spaces - such as a digital platform - that will effectively facilitate exchange and cooperation spaces, even in the COVID-19 era.

As we go about creating peace on the Korean Peninsula, we cannot think strictly in terms of ‘government’ and ‘non-government.’ The Korean government should create and support spaces for all kinds of actors to become peacemakers, including the National Assembly, Korean civil society, businessmen, artists, and overseas Koreans.

*IL-Young Jeong is a research professor at Sogang University in Seoul. His key research interests include North Korea's social control system, inter-Korean relations, and peace on the Korean Peninsula.